


Matters of Arrogance

by vials



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Q, M/M, Q is not technically Q, he's also very morally grey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 10:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15192428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: When someone begins interfering with practically everything MI6 is trying to do, Bond is sent on the trail. Unfortunately for him it's not his usual kind of operation. For example, it begins a stone's throw away from the MI6 building, and involves an impatient man in an oversized anorak.





	Matters of Arrogance

Somehow, Q was not what Bond had expected.

To be fair, he hadn’t known what he expected when he had received the brief, and it was always a bad idea to try and put an attitude and a personality to an enemy before seeing them for yourself. There was little more dangerous in Bond’s line of work than assumptions and expectations, though the picture he had been shown of the young man had certainly looked similar to what he thought someone of Q’s expertise would look like. A mop of messy dark hair, styled at one point but left to grow out slightly. Pale complexion, skinny, large glasses. Exactly the kind of look Bond would expect from someone who spent more of their life in front of a computer than anywhere else. 

What he hadn’t expected was how Q would come across in real life. Bond had to admit to himself that he had perhaps allowed himself to stereotype a little: he had been expecting a nervous, jittery type, unsure of himself in the real world and clinging to his reputation online as though it meant anything the second he stepped away from his computer. What he had got instead was completely different. 

A mental side note, of course, was that he had also expected to meet him somewhere a little further afield, and not waiting in line for coffee at the Pret a Manger directly next to the MI6 building. As in, the damn place was a stone’s throw away, and there was Q, drumming his fingers at the side counter and waiting for his toastie to be ready. He was skinny but taller than Bond had expected, his laptop bag slung over one shoulder and a large anorak practically reaching his knees. At first glance he looked like a university student, and Bond remembered that he wasn’t far off that, age-wise. Twenty-eight, he remembered. Christ, how had he gotten so involved with all this at such a young age? 

They glanced at one another, exchanged polite smiles, and nothing was said. Bond thoroughly expected it to remain that way, until a minute had passed and Q finally sighed, pushing himself back from the small counter.

“They’re usually quick in here,” he said. “That’s why I come.”

“You’re in a hurry?” Bond asked neutrally.

“Everyone’s in a hurry here,” Q replied. “This is London.”

“Well,” said Bond, “I do hope you’re not one of those arseholes who’s going to be rude to the staff.”

“Of course not,” Q said indignantly. “I was raised correctly. Besides,” he added, abruptly turning to leave. “I can just get my money back later.”

There was another entrance to the shop, on the other side of the building to Bond’s workplace. It was this exit that Q left from now, crossing the small courtyard and vanishing out of sight. Bond gave him a moment, collecting his coffee and wasting some time popping the lid off and checking it was the right drink, and then he followed at a more leisurely pace. Call it a gut instinct, but he didn’t think Q would have gone far.

*

“Tell me about him,” Bond had said, a few weeks earlier. It seemed he’d been pounding at the treadmill for an age, and he was almost grateful for the fact Tanner had appeared by his elbow, holding one of those clipboards that told him there might finally be something to do. “What’s his deal?”

“It’s quite remarkable, actually,” Tanner replied, flipping through the pages. “These people, they could do so much more with their lives. It’s honestly a shame.”

“Half of them could end up here,” Bond agreed. “Though God knows why they would want to.”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that,” Tanner said, and the page-flipping stopped. “Because he used to work here.”

Bond didn’t break pace on the treadmill, but he did turn to look at him, admittedly intrigued. “That’s unusual. Do I know him?”

“I doubt it,” Tanner replied. “You were quite often out of the country during the time period when he was around, and he worked in Q-branch. He excelled there, and everyone was fully expecting him to get the job one day. Apparently now he uses Q as his online handle. I suppose he gets a laugh from it.”

“How come he left?” 

“He didn’t leave so much as _vanish_ ,” Tanner replied. “Of course there was an investigation, brief worries about kidnapping, but nothing came up and no one came forward with any demands. At the same time, security wasn’t affected, and it seemed like the kid had just had enough. He was very young when he was here, I’m talking barely twenty, twenty-one. Some people can’t hack it, and he did seem the high-strung type. Overachiever, grew up lower middle class and worked his arse off at school. Finished two years early and won a scholarship to Cambridge, and made a fortune while there developing apps which he used to finance himself. Got snapped up by us towards the end of his university education and joined up practically as soon as he graduated. The consensus seemed to be that it was too much, or perhaps the stress of this combined with the years of stress he’d already been through gave him cold feet, but being from such a competitive environment – not to mention being so hard on himself – made it impossible for him to just quit outright. Instead he chose to vanish, as though it was a way to save face.”

“Odd,” Bond said. “Someone who goes through Cambridge two years early and still has time to develop enough software to make a small fortune seems like they should be able to handle menial duties in Q-branch.”

“That’s what some people thought,” Tanner said, shrugging, “but nothing came of it, so what could they do? All was peaceful.”

“Until it wasn’t.”

“Until it wasn’t,” Tanner agreed, giving a small smile. 

“So, what do you reckon? He was a plant for someone else?”

“On the contrary, he seems to be acting alone. We can’t find any links between him and any of our known enemies, and the method of working seems to be the work of one person. One highly organised person, but a single person nevertheless.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Well,” Tanner said, and now his good-naturedness seemed to fade. He frowned and then shook his head. “There’s no real way to say this without sounding incredibly dramatic, but essentially, he’s paralysed us.”

*

“You again,” Q said, as Bond turned away from the counter, coffee in hand. He had spotted him before, of course, sitting with his back to the room along the row of seats facing out the window, but he hadn’t thought Q was going to say anything. 

“Me again,” he replied, and Q turned in his seat, nodding to the empty one next to him.

“Sit down.”

“That sounds very demanding.”

“That’s because it was a demand.”

Bond smiled despite himself, and sat down. For another few minutes they sat in silence, watching the cars and busses go past, the lights changing and groups of pedestrians pouring out from Vauxhall station hurrying across the road. Bond had always wondered about the logistics of having a coffee shop here, with comfortable window-facing seats all in a row facing the MI6 building. If one was so inclined, they could sit here for hours without arousing suspicion, watching to see who appeared regularly around the building. With a sideways glance at Q, who was holding his tea to his lips and blowing on it gently, he wondered if that was why he seemed to be here so often. 

“Do you know what that building is?” Q asked suddenly, as though aware of what Bond was thinking.

“Ironically, I think most people do,” Bond replied. 

“I’m glad you think it’s ironic. I’ve always wondered why such a secret place has such a grand building. I mean, architecturally, it’s beautiful. Tough, too, I’ve heard. A lot of people would be put off by all that glass in case of attacks, but apparently it’s sturdy stuff. So I suppose you wouldn’t have to worry too much about knowing where it is – the only problem would be getting in and out, I think, if you worked there. Everyone knows what it is, and therefore what _you_ are. A bit dangerous, I would have thought.”

“And what would your solution to that be?” Bond asked, amused. “Don’t give me that innocent look. You clearly have something in mind.”

“I suppose you would just have to be careful, wouldn’t you?” Q asked. “And I suppose be vigilant about who’s keeping watch from a coffee shop.”

“But there are so many regulars. How would you know?”

“I suppose you’d have to be very, very good.”

Bond laughed and took a sip of his coffee. Maybe this kid wasn’t that far off what he had expected after all. He was arrogant, certainly – that kind of untouchable arrogance that lead someone doing what he was doing to stay not only in the same country as his target but also in the same city, a hundred feet across the road from its stronghold. If that wasn’t arrogance. Bond wouldn’t know what was. 

“Paranoid?” he asked, and Q gave him a sharp look. 

“I wouldn’t know what you mean.”

“You think a lot about it. Are you a spy trying not to be noticed? Or are you someone trying not to be noticed by the spies?”

“Please,” Q said, snorting, “you wouldn’t catch me getting involved in anything like that.”

“Why not? Most people think that being a spy would be cool.”

“Because it’s all a messy business, isn’t it?” Q asked matter-of-factly. “All the necessary evils, all the covering up. It’s dirty. I don’t think I’d like to get involved with any of that.”

_I’m sure,_ Bond thought, and kept it carefully off his face. 

*

“Paralysed us?” Bond asked, frowning at the wall in front of him. “How so?”

“He knows everything we’re doing,” Tanner replied, sounding tired just thinking about it. “And it’s the strangest thing. Sometimes things go off without a hitch, but other times the missions are compromised before they’ve even begun, or they’ll begin as planned but something will come up and the plan will have to be changed, and _then_ it’s compromised. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for it, but of course that’s ridiculous.”

“There’s always a reason,” Bond agreed, “even if it doesn’t make sense to anybody else.”

“And it certainly doesn’t. We’ve been trying to work out a pattern for some time, but with no luck. With very quick changes of plans we can sometimes elude him, but that’s no way to run an operation. It’s dangerous for everyone involved, and not to mention embarrassing. Running around trying to hide from someone barely out of high school, it’s ridiculous.”

Bond gave a wry smile. “It’s always the ones you least expect. How many organisations have failed to do this, and one bitter ex Q-branch nerd brings it all down.”

“I keep saying we need to rehaul our cybersecurity,” Tanner said, sounding uncharacteristically grumpy. “But what the hell do I know? The point is he’s in the system somehow and he’s causing all manner of problems, but we don’t know why. Nothing Q-branch does stops him for long. It might buy us a few days but then he starts up again. He must know our systems inside out.”

“Well, of course,” Bond said. “He helped work on them. I imagine he took notes. Maybe even tinkered with a few things and left little ways in, past the security. Who knows?”

“No-one, apparently,” Tanner said. “And it doesn’t look like we’re going to work out anything soon.”

“I suppose that’s where I come in.”

“You would be correct. If we can’t stop him, we need to find him, and we need to bring him in.”

*

Bond had never expected to find Q in London, merely weeks after the conversation with Tanner, but it was funny how such things went. The more he got to know Q, the more he realised it was entirely in character for him; they weren’t so different, the two of them, when it came to matters of arrogance. With that in mind it was easy to get to know him, their conversations consisting of a lot of mental sparring, both of them being forced for reasons only known to them to control their curiosity about the other. Bond had thought about how best to catch Q in the act – after all, there was no crime without proof – but Q was good at what he did and it was impossible to catch him out with something as simple as time frames. Even if Q was with Bond the whole time, information would still be leaked and operations ruined; Bond suspected that Q had such things on some kind of automated system, but again, with no proof he could hardly haul him in.

So for several months all he could really do was see as much of him as possible, and of course this would create certain connotations. Bond had never expected to have to pull such a tactic – usually he was seducing the girlfriends or boyfriends of the target rather than the target themselves, but then again, he had never met a target so eager to love. If he had been the kind of person to feel bad about such things he would have felt awful about what he was doing to Q, because he was positive that when it all came out Q was going to be incredibly wounded. Of course, it would serve him right for all of the hassle he’d been giving MI6, but still. Bond could see how such guilt came about. 

The worst part was that in any other circumstance, Bond would have found it easy to love Q. He was exactly the kind of person he was drawn to – fiercely intelligent, tough though he didn’t look it, not afraid to go toe-to-toe with him and absolutely refusing to take any nonsense. The chemistry the two of them had was legitimate; only the reason it had been discovered was false. It was a dirty trick, one of the dirty tricks that Q had told Bond about during their first extended conversation about such matters, and as things progressed Bond got to know more about these moral qualms of Q’s. 

“The whole thing is a mess,” Q slurred, after one too many happy hour cocktails. “Everything.”

“Everything?” Bond asked. He was feeling a little drunk himself – certainly not as drunk as Q, but pleasantly fuzzy around the edges. 

“Everything,” Q confirmed. “Just… government, and stuff like—you know? I mean, it’s all a mess. Cruel. Some things? No. Some things are fine. Some things really are necessary. But things like… I mean, so much of it is just an _excuse_ , you know?”

“An excuse for what?”

“To poke our noses into places where they shouldn’t be,” Q said, his tone sharpening a little. “Or to move things to our advantage. An arm of the state. _Intelligence_.” He laughed. “Only if it benefits us, right? Everything else just gets conveniently overlooked.”

It all came out on the journey home – the deserted streets and empty Tube carriages. Q made an impressive orator, Bond thought. He certainly knew his stuff. Bond disagreed, naturally, but if he hadn’t been so dedicated to his work he thought he might be able to be convinced. Q had sources, and facts, and figures, and every so often he slipped up slightly; information that was too specific, things that were in first person when they perhaps shouldn’t be. The motive was clear – Q was alright with some things but not others, and the _others_ had outweighed the things he was alright with, and the next thing MI6 knew he was acting like some omnipotent Chief, allowing the things he saw as alright and stopping the others. It was as good as a confession, and Bond could have easily brought him in then and there, but that was the night that Q didn’t make a show of seeing him off once they reached his stop, and Bond figured that if he had to keep up appearances for one more night he could – especially if it gave him access to Q’s flat, and everything that might be in it. 

Q’s flat was neat but cluttered, with things scattered all over the place and pictures and postcards taped to the walls and books spilling out from bookshelves and into piles on the floor. He was surprised when Q kissed him first, when they had barely gotten in through the front door, and even more surprised at the ferocity of it; he had thought Q would be a more gentle, hesitant kisser, but there was something desperate and almost angry about the way Q caught his lip between his teeth or pressed his mouth against his firmly enough that it stung. It seemed the man was full of surprises, and despite the fact he knew it could never last Bond was curious to see what else he could find out about him; maybe even a little bitter that it was nothing more than a means to an end. 

_Dirty work,_ Q had said, and Bond couldn’t agree more.

*

It was only later, leaving Q asleep in the bedroom, that Bond noticed something about the flat was strange. There were lots of belongings, of course, but there were no photographs of anyone that could have been a part of Q’s life, and closer inspection of the postcards revealed all were blank. Aside from the clothes Q had been wearing out, there didn’t seem to be much else there, and the bathroom was devoid of anything like toothpaste or shampoo. 

Most confusingly of all, there was no electronic equipment. Bond had been sure that there would be at least one laptop in the house; the people down at Q-branch were sure that to run some of the operations he had managed, he would need some serious tech power – several computers, his own server host. Such equipment would have required an entire room to accommodate it, but the only rooms in the flat were the bedroom, bathroom, and an open plan living room and kitchen. Speaking of the kitchen, Bond quickly noticed that there was no real food in the house. It was completely bare. 

_Odd,_ he thought, but he wasn’t worried. Q was secretive, even if he was a little loose-lipped about his opinions when he was drunk. He was also raking in money thanks to his apps and whatever else he might be up to online, so the idea of a decoy flat wasn’t entirely out of the question. After all, it was something MI6 did. Q had once been employed by them; he would have likely taken note of all their security tips. 

He could explain it away, if he was really desperate, but he would know it still didn’t add up. Something was wrong, and that was why when he approached the bedroom again he did so silently, his feet barely making a sound on the carpet. He approached the door slowly and then peered around it. There was nothing but stillness inside the room, until the second that he realised Q was no longer in bed, and as he reached out and pushed the door open a little wider there was an almighty bang and for a brief moment Bond couldn’t see anything but smoke.

When his senses caught up to him he could feel the side of his face was prickly with heat, and the hand he had used to open the door had a deep and unsettling ache. He blinked the flashing spots away and looked at it, finding himself relieved it was still there, but it had certainly looked better. It was streaked with blood and he could tell from the ache that it was broken; he cursed and tucked it against himself, squinting through the smoke.

He could see a figure by the window, pushing it open, and he almost went straight after it until he remembered there could be further explosives in the room. He could smell burning and from the flickering light in the room he knew something must have caught alight. 

“Think about this, Q!” he called over, and the figure briefly paused.

“I don’t need to think about it,” he said, his voice oddly cool; a tone Bond had never heard him use before. “You’ve more than proven my point.”

“Smarter than you look, aren’t you?”

“That implies I look idiotic.”

“Well, those sweaters were always a little much.”

“If you insist on being such an arse, I’ll detonate the other one.”

“The other one?”

“Yes, the other one. You think I would have let you just run over here?” He swung a leg out of the window. “Another criticism for you to take back to your bosses, James. You always seem to think that your people are the smartest in the room.”

“Admittedly we usually are.”

Q snorted. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“You think you’re better?” Bond asked, almost casually. “Not playing as many dirty games?”

Q was silent.

“People died,” Bond continued. “Those operations you compromised. Some people didn’t come back home. Is that alright?”

“If you go out intending to cause harm,” Q eventually said, “you cannot complain when harm comes to you.”

He ducked his head through the window; Bond could just about make him out.

“It’s three floors up, Q, and paving stones at the bottom.”

“I’m a good climber.” He pulled the other leg out after him. 

“I hope so.” Bond peered at the floor, squinting through the smoke, trying to see if Q was bluffing. He didn’t think he was. “When did you work it out?”

“In the coffee shop,” Q said, his voice slightly muffled. “The first time. And if you’d been any spy worth your salt, you would have noticed I never ordered anything in the first place.”

He was gone with a brief flash of movement; seconds later, Bond could hear scrambling over the roof. Despite himself, he smiled. 

“Brave new world,” he muttered, and, wincing a little at his hand, turned to go after him.


End file.
